Mike Johnson recently lied to us ( what else is new, right)? When Trump signed a bill to claw back money already provided by Congress to USAID and PBS and NPR, Johnson said on camera (even I could tell he was lying) that this was to claw back $8 billion dollars provided to USAID and $1.1 billion to NPR/PBS because we need to reduce government spending and to reduce the size of government. Hey, Mik, if you want to save money here is a great idea. Why don’t we end health and dental coverage for all members of the Legislative branch. Since with the assault on Medicaid and poor people losing their health care, let all members of the legislative branch as well as their staff (and let’s reduce the number of staff that our senators and congressmen have–fire them like DOGE did to other people) Lets not stop there. Get rid of health and dental insurance for all members of the executive and judicial branch. And terminate their retirement money. How about clawing all those funds too. Eliminate all medical and dental care and retirement money. Let them be like the rest of us and since most of them are rich, it could not be a strain on their wallets. We can save lots of money and let them get their own coverage. But I bet that Mike never thought about this.
USAID was a small part of our budget and did a great humanitarian service to the world. When our Secretary of State Rubio was in the US Senate, he said USAID was great and asked Biden to allocate even more money to it. It provided food vaccinations and medical treatment for AIDS sufferers in Africa. With the end of USAID millions will go hungry and millions will die. Also China will go into Africa to fill the void. When Musk ended USAID, Rubio said nothing. He has become just another toady for Trump. USAID went to areas of the world suffering from natural disasters. When Myanmar was hit by a devastating earthquake, China. India and Japan went in to help. We were nowhere to be seen. 4 USAID personnel went to Myanmar but when they got there, they found out that they had been fired and had to find their way back. One of DOGE people was in charge of the food stored around the world and refused to distribute the food. The food is expiring and must be destroyed which will be expensive. This is inexcusable and just downright cruel.
Trump wants PBS/NPR defunded because they provide accurate news and is at times critical of Trump–something that he hates.